The Northern Lights are lighting up the night sky, creating a rare sight across the UK and Europe.
The aurora borealis was spotted in Whitley Bay on the northeast coast. Essex; Cambridgeshire; and Wokingham in Berkshire.
Kathleen Cnea, from Great Hawksley, Essex, said: “It was an absolutely amazing sight.”
Met Office spokesman Stephen Dixon said Friday there was a good chance of seeing the aurora borealis.
He said: “While the shorter nights will limit visibility, there is still a good chance of seeing the Northern Lights, especially on Friday night, especially in parts of Scotland, Ireland and northern England and Wales.
“With the right equipment, we might even be able to see further south.
“These conditions could continue into Saturday night, but we still need to work out the details of exactly where that will be.”
Dixon said the combination of clear skies and increased activity of the sun reaching Earth will increase the chances of seeing this display.
Auroral displays occur when charged particles around magnetic poles collide with gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
In the Northern Hemisphere, most of this activity occurs within a band known as the auroral oval, which covers a range from 60 degrees to 75 degrees latitude.
As activity increases, it expands to cover a larger area. As a result, exhibits can sometimes be found as far south as the UK.
In the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued an unusually severe geomagnetic storm warning on Friday. It warned operators of orbiting power plants and spacecraft to take precautions. NOAA said the storm could produce aurora borealis as far south as Alabama and northern California.
“For most people on Earth, there’s no need to do anything,” said Rob Steenberg, a scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Center. “It’s truly a gift from space weather: the aurora borealis.”
Steenberg and his colleagues said the best views of the aurora borealis may come from cell phone cameras, which are better at capturing light than the naked eye.
Even after a storm passes, signals between GPS satellites and ground receivers can become scrambled or lost, according to NOAA. But with so many navigation satellites, any outage shouldn’t last long, Steenberg said.
According to NOAA, the flare appears to be associated with a sunspot 16 times the diameter of Earth. This is all part of solar activity, which is increasing as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle.
NASA said the storm posed no significant threat to the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Steenberg said the biggest concern was rising radiation levels, and the crew could be moved to a more shielded part of the station if necessary.
Increased radiation levels could also threaten some of NASA’s scientific satellites. Antti Pulkinen, head of the space agency’s solar physics science division, said highly sensitive equipment would be switched off if necessary to avoid damage. Several sun-focused spacecraft were monitoring all activity.
“This is exactly the kind of thing we want to observe,” Pulkinen said.
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